Hello ifeinwinter,

I doubt that one day, cryptocurrencies will just banish of the side of the earth.  In fact, the South Korea Finance Minister stated this in a statement early february: "For open-source blockchain networks, cryptocurrencies are necessary as incentives for individuals to participate in the network".  As to whether blockchain technologies can exist without cryptocurrencies, absolutely. The coins minted through mining and staking are used to incentivise people to participate in the network and to give over their processing power to verify transactions. The only practical applications for this would be for uses in private & permissioned blockchains as business don't need to be incentivised for their own ledger.  I hope that gives you a basic insight into your question.

Kind regards,
Beau Mathieson       

You are absolutely right, and as many have pointed out these corrections are healthy for the growing market. If we look to examples from traditional and mature markets for example the corrections that occurred as result of the housing bubble 'burst' of 08. The markets than were boated with repackaged, triple A rated mortgaged backed securities which many knew were full of subprime mortgages (we could relate this to coins such as S**tCoin or Coinye West). Since these toxic assets were racking in billions of dollars a year for the banks and investors much like seen in our own ecosystem, it was only till a few negative events occurred like the bankruptcy of New Century (a mortage lender) where the downward spiral of the markets began, for us that was our Tether or Mt Gox moments. These crashes recreate a healthy ecosystem, and make worthless coins, worthless. We talk about store of value, however the only thing we could use to place as a value of the coin, is the work need to produce that coin. So in that, coins that rely on PoW should in theory have more value than PoS coins as they are more energy intensive. That is my two cents.